Gallantry's Last March
Christopher Tietjens stood as a lone, stone guardian before the great, mutilated stump of what was once the Groby Tree. The aftermath of the slaughter done to the monument of his family's estate had long been swept away, but the base of its mighty trunk stayed firmly rooted within the ground. Whether the house's serving men had attempted to lift the great oak and failed, or whether they had held at least enough respect for Christopher and his family name to leave at least a grave marker for the tree in the form of its base, he was unsure. For that matter, the thought he had little care to know. His heart, his love of his family and what Groby Tree stood far, and any semblance of resect he had held for himself because of his family name was laid to waste. That pride had, like the age-old symbol of his family that lay dormant before him now, been torn asunder and left with only the roots of what had once been a thriving and powerful being to remember it by. He had moved on past the Old Ways that the tree stood for, tossing a chop of its wood into the fireplace…but it moving on, and forgetting were matters of entirely different natures from one another.
Sure as the sun rose, he had gotten what he wanted; he had outlived the war, held in his arms each night a woman he loved, and had been able to reinstate his family's wealth with the added income of his officer's commission. He was supporting not only himself and his mistress, Valentine, in a simple town flat, but also his wife, Sylvia, and the son that had caused them to marry on the off, at Groby Estate. Despite all of these happy trappings, life was but a façade of what could have been. His life had once been a parade of chivalry and honor; now it was a parade of happiness, behind the mask of which stood a wounded, crippled heart that would never shed the scars that Sylvia, and the war, had left upon him. Had it been Sylvia alone that betrayed him, had it been only her infidelity, he could have taken it all, locked it behind a door and ignored it for the sake of his love for Valentine, after all that had happened. Yet still, in the face of the war, his very soul had been wrenched from its safe-walls of civility, and thrown out into the trenches with the dogs. The guilt that was wrent from him with every man he lost beneath his charge, every innocent horse that was shot down to avoid enemy capture, in addition to the massive realization he had come to as his wife had visited him that night in France that so much of her bitch's behavior had been a cry for love and attention from him, and so many other events down to the suicide his father had committed because of the black mark he had brought to the family…Christopher had nearly completely broken beneath the weight of the great yolk.
Staying blissfully ignorant of it all when he had been concussed, not even remembering the name upon which he had brought so much shame and villainy upon with his lack of action, would have been a blessing. There were times, as he lay beside his mistress in the night, cradling her smooth, curved form to him, that guilt wrung at him even more as he realized that whilst he had set up for himself a life he could possess some semblance of happiness within… it was never to be what it could have been. Before all of this had happened…before the war, before one moment of lust-induced stupidity had emptied him within Sylvia's bodily trap… he had dreams and plans for a bright future, a loving family. And here he was, scraping up remnents of his dreams and attempting to piece them into something akin to the past, and what it could have been.
When Valentine had appeared upon his doorstep upon his return from the war, and naturally assumed her position as his mistress would be immediately placed upon her…he had faltered. Doubted. All through the war, it had been thoughts of her, deep in the night, that had pulled him through the haze of blood and fog. Yet upon facing her, looking down at her young, still vibrant face, eyes unmarred by the brutal reality of death and betrayal… he was looking down at but a child in so many ways. When he had first encountered her, Valentine had been everything he had wanted to be and more at that age…and now he was farther from than ever he were before. Everything was different…he was different. So much had happened in the last five years. Too much. He had balanced on the edge of a precarious clifface; he had opened his mouth to tell Valentine to return home and live out her life in the respectable way that would bring her honor amongst her peers…but then the words of his General had rung through his ears. You were the last. He was the only one still holding onto that sense of the aristocracy long after its death-throws had subsided and decomposition had set into its gored, spoilt carcass. There was nothing left to demand respect for… not after the blasted war had ripped everything from the country as a whole. He had nothing left to stand for, and neither did Valentine….nothing but true love. And so, against his gentleman's instincts, he had invited her into his house, and made her his Mistress, hiding it from none, including his wife.
His wife…oh, his wife. Try as he might, he would never be rid of her. The carcass of the aristocracy and the old ways may have been picked clean by the crows of time, but if there was but one bone he grasped to like a clinch, it was his marriage. Had it been a marriage alone, he would have happily snapped the bone like a toothpick and walked away…but it had not been. It had been a parentage, absent though he may have been for years of Michael's life during the war. He loved Michael, and for that, he would never bring himself, despite the crowing of the outside world to do so, divorce the mother of his child.
That son, though his sireage was a mystery to any but Sylvia, was the son that Christopher took to his heart without question, though he sometimes wondered if even Sylvia knew for certain that the child was in fact Gerald Drake's and not Christopher's. From the moment Christopher had laid eyes upon the infant the day of his birth, a Father's love had swelled within him, and he had never again cared to question the paternity of the child. Even as he grew, the boy had inherited a darkish-blond mop of hair that Christopher like to reassure himself was, in fact, his, even if it was the only dominant feature to take form in Michael. Sylvia had more than once during one of her fits of rage, flung out the possibility that the blond hair was but a throw back to her equally blond aunt, and that chances were, Michael was Gerald Drake's bastard, completely unrelated to Christopher. Were it the case, they both knew it would have meant that Christopher had thrown his life away for naught, and it was a deep stab in the heart that only failed to snuff out his soul completely because of the love that he held for Michael despite it all. Too soft, everyone reamed about Christopher. Too soft to be a real man. Perhaps he was… but he was damned if his convictions that Michael was his son, be it by the tie of blood or not, would not be the one hardened thing he would refuse to release.
As it was, it was for Michael that he now stood, staring at the ghost of Groby Tree. He was awaiting the boy to be delivered down by one of the nannies, for the boy to stay the month with himself and Valentine. It would be the first time Valentine would be introduced as a second mother…the first real mother the boy would have known. Christopher had had to reassure Valentine that she would be fine, despite her time with children during the war. She had been nervous, but Christopher had quelled her worries with a light kiss and the promise that the child was his, first and foremost, and he would be the leading monarch for the child's upbringing.
"The light into the drawing room is exceedingly improved."
A poutish voice, underlied with a hint of deeper, lustrous woman's tones came from behind him. Christopher did not turn to face his wife. His back was all he would greet the woman with; she deserved nothing more. He said nothing, his jaw tensing painfully as a muscle twitched in irritation.
"Oh, come now, Christopher. It has been months since that ghastly thing was brought down. Surely you don't still hold it against me. You did it to yourself, you know." Sylvia's tongue was snaking around his heart, he recognized her game… but as ever, he was powerless to escape it. Waiting for Michael held him fast.
"Is the boy ready?" he inquired tersely, his hands gripping one another behind his rod-stiff back.
"I told them to wait until I went back inside; I wanted the chance to speak with you, privately. I can't very well speak openly with that little kitchen maid you call a mistress."
"You will refer to her as Miss Wannop," Christopher snapped, turning his head ever so slightly to shoot a dark gaze at the lanky woman standing at his flank. "Bring the boy down; I have no wish to converse with you even on the minutest of subjects."
"No, but you will, nevertheless. Do you know why?"
Christopher glared ahead coldly, knowing he need not answer; his wife liked to sound of her own voice too much to leave the question hang in the air.
"Because I am your other half, Christopher. Despite it all, despite the insults I've flung at you, despite the infidelities, despite yourself, you love me. That alone, will forever have you at my heel like the wounded dog you always were."
"I…don't…love you," Christopher hissed out doggedly, shaking with his infuriation. Why must she always, always dig at every festering wound he possessed? What did she wish to achieve? He rich laughter filled the air around him like the siren's call, and he was reminded of the sweet signing of a bomb in the air before it landed and splintered into deadly shrapnel.
"You do, Christopher, in the same way that despite myself, I will always love you," his wife responded with an ironic tone. "We met by chance on a train, and I knew then I had to have you…what I didn't know was that I would be fighting to have you to myself for the rest of my life."
Christopher whipped about on the heel of his boot upon this declaration and glared at her with mirth worthy of hell itself.
"You did not fight for me, Sylvia! You fought for your sexual freedom like a caged animal. You kicked against every comfort I offered you, every endowment of luxury I offered. You squandered it all away like chattel! I walked into this marriage knowing damned well it was a trap, because I felt it was my duty to provide if there was even the slightest chance that Michael was mine! I gave you everything, and you did everything in your power to ruin me. Don't you dare profess to have fought for our marriage!"
Sylvia was silenced at first, one of the few times during their years together that Christopher watched her stumble in her mind. A look of hurt, and of realization played across her face for a brief moment before her features settled into a mask of superiority once more.
"But that was the rub, Christopher. Don't you see?" she exclaimed, stepping forward, her face alight with frenzy. "That's what it was, to you. That's all it ever was. It was a trap, and you treated it as such. You trapped yourself in it with your honor; it was your damned honor that you had the marriage with, not me! Had you shown but one moment of needing me…" She paused, her eyes glowing with unshed tears. Christopher felt guile rise up within him, hating her for her tears and wanting to wipe them away all at the same instant. "When I realized what I had married… a pompous, unfeeling man that was so much higher than everyone else with your intelligent airs and your education! I could never match up. I was inferior… but if there was one thing I knew, one thing I was achieved at…it was men. You were the only man I could not truly have, like all the others."
"Damn you, woman!" Christopher exploded, taking a powerful stride forward, and stopping himself from shaking his wife silly, but only just. "Curb your lying tongue! You seduced me in that train! When you became pregnant, you sought me out knowing that of the two of us, I was the safer marriage because of my family. The night before our very wedding you slept with the same man that may yet still be Michael's real sire, and then expected me to pay homage to the same body you had just whored out to Gerald Drake! Did you expect me to fawn at your feet when you had trapped me into a marriage of duty?!" It was all too much. All of the pain, all of the guilt and the blame finally broke through to cold wall the Christopher Tietjens had put up to protect himself from his wife. "Despite it all…I never complained. I never brunted against your actions. I wanted you to have the freedom to come to me on your own, and not out of a need to provide for yourself and your son. But you never did. You did everything in your power to stab me in the back, the entire marriage."
"I only stabbed you in the back because that's all I ever saw of you, Christopher! It was all you ever gave to me! I was desperate for your attention! I wanted- needed- you to slam me down, control me, use all of that power that I know lies within you. I needed the man I met on the train that fucked me senseless an hour after meeting me!"
"And you were the one riding me!" Christopher roared, a tear streaming down his face. "Even then, I was trapped beneath you and your parted legs and what lay between them. I was trapped between and beneath them throughout our marriage! Do not speak to me of my failures! I failed you in many a way that I admitted to you the night you came to me in France. I know that my holier-than-thou façade drove you to half of your behavior. But damnit all to hell, Sylvia, was that a reason to leave me, disgrace me, slander my name, and lay desolation upon my family's home? Every mistake I made combined cannot match up to even a single one of your own!" Christopher turned away from his wife, his breath sharp and gasping, tears streaming down his face openly, his body quaking. He stood for a moment, recomposing himself, before turning back to his wife and guilt swamped him once more. Her face was bewildered, confused, and indignant all at once. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He pulled out a handkerchief from his coat pocket and held it out to her shakily. She took it grudgingly, wiping the single tear that had trailed down her freckled cheek. His bit his tongue, fighting to distract himself from the beautiful sight of the vulnerable woman Sylvia portrayed before him. He knew her games well now. "Civilized conversation between us is impossible, it would seem. My apologies."
Sylvia let out a bark of a laugh, though her smile did not reach her eyes.
"Oh, Christopher," she said, stepping forward and stroking his cheek tenderly. He tensed at her closeness.
Her touch was hateful to him for all that it meant in the past, but blast it, his body still responded to the beautiful woman before him. It always had; the coldness Sylvia proclaimed against had been an extreme exercise in self-control every time she had offered herself to him since that day on the train, a self-control he had lost that night in France, and had never completely retained again.
"You dear, sweet thing," she continued, her voice soft and stroking. "Whatever power you hold beneath this gentleman's act is buried so deeply, you can't even let it out but to shout for a minute and then retreat it back into its cave. If only that part of you could have…" she sighed, looking into his eyes, and he suddenly felt naked beneath her piercing gaze. "No. That's not who you are. It never was. Knowing that now, seeing that now, after all of this…I wish I could have you just once, one more time, knowing that now. How different it would be to make love to your kindness rather than your indifference… and without all these walls of gallantry taking its last march within you, bearing up the world's evils all on your lonesome."
She reached up now with both arms, sliding her left hand up his chest and curling it about his neck, gently pulling him down to her. Christopher felt his blood begin to race, and a stirring in his loins even before her lips touched his ever so demurely. He was stalk still for a moment, but he found himself filled with that old friend of lust as Sylvia deepened the kiss with her perfect, bow-like lips. He knew this game… he would not be fooled again. He pulled back politely, and held her in place as he took a single back stride. Her eyes searched his in a detecting way, and he knew he was right.
"I may be Gallantry itself taking its last march into the sunset, Sylvia, but if I am, it is only because you are the evils that must be borne, and I think no other man but one of the old world honor could bear up under that weight."
Turning away from his wife with a determination not to observe her manipulative face, Christopher strode into Groby Manor, and called out for the nanny. Sure enough, Michael came bolting out of the play room and down the stairs, fairly knocking Christopher from his crouched position as his boy jumped into his arms. He swung the boy about, laughing in his deep rich tones and taking comfort in the one reason he was willing to withstand this marriage by name. When he led his son out of Groby Manor, Sylvia had gone.
Michael climbed into the motor ahead of him, but Christopher paused for the briefest of moments and turned to take in the sight of Groby Estate. He may no longer keep his residency here, but he would forever call it home. He had learned to let go of many of the old trappings of the old ways…the Parade of the aristocrats of the Old English was at an end…but here at Groby, there would always be a place for Gallantry and Honor.